Shutter and Sigaw

This a foreign horror movie review post. First up, Sigaw:

The story is about Marvin (Richard Gutierrez) spent all his savings on a really crappy appartment unit in an equally crappy appartment building. He soon finds out that the place is haunted. Shadowy bloody figures tend to pop in and out. At night there are always screamings, knockings, whispers and creepy voices. His girlfriend, Pinky (the bubblecious Angel Locsin) saw some "things" too when she visited him. Yet, Marvin still refuse to move out. Sad to say, I could understand that when I've spent all my hard earned blood and tears money on a crappy looks-like-the-wall-is-collapsing appartment, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU D#MBSH!+!

Meanwhile, Ana (Iza Calzado) visits Jude (James Blanco), the other tenant in the appartment building. They having an affair? Nah, she's dropping off her daughter cause soon her abusive green eyed monster husband (Jomari Yllana) is coming home. She doesn't want her daughter to get beat up too.

Sigaw is one of those horror movies that tries to make you figure out what is going on. It throws a lil hint here and there, but a bit too obvious. Even before half way through the movie, I've already know what's going on. It's pretty slow. Very draggy. When the movie finally let the cat out of the bag, it got slightly better.

Richard Gutierrez's acting sucks. His expressions all look very wooden. Even when he's suppose to be sleepy. Angel Locsin is convincing as the girl friend. The others were pretty good too. Heck, even the lil girl is better than Richie boy. Pfft!

Anyway, what made me wanted to watch this tagalog movie is because of a review in First Magazine. The story is nothing amazing, but the settings and sound effects are really good. Marvin's place looks really bad. Cmon, a place like that, I bet it's really haunted. I wouldn't want it even if it's free!

Upon surfing the net, apparently the place that they shoot for Marvin's appartment is an abandoned, haunted theater.

The verdict: Watch it if you have nothing better to do, no good shows on TV or DVDs/VCDs to watch except this one.

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Now for Shutter:



Saw it on DVD. Kicking myself now for not catching it on the big screen previously. Very original story. Creepiness is up there with my other favourite horror movies.

Tun (Ananda Everingham) and Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee), a young couple after attending one of Tun's buddy's wedding; were driving home in the middle of the night. They ran down a woman and hit a bilboard. Tun convinced Jane that they should just drive off, leaving the woman behind. The @$$hole!

Wrecked by guilt and nightmares, the couple searches the newspapers, called hospitals to find if there's any trace of the woman. The strange thing is, nothing turns up.

Tun a photographer, noticed strange gastly images starts appearing in his photographs. One even has what looks like a face of a woman. So, who was the woman that they ran down? Is she really dead?? What happened to her?

Shutter, like Sigaw is another horror movie, in which the plot is a mystery. But unlike Sigaw, Shutter is more successful. But I figured it out anyway. Hah! I should go out and solve crimes or something. :P

Acting from everyone is pretty good. You can't get any better acting from any horror movie than this. Settings, effects and sounds are all very well done. The bathroom scene with Jane (No, she's not taking a shower) is great. When the lights got shut off while Tun was all alone, no lights except the flashes from his camera in which he had dropped is just wayy too creepy.

Story has a nice pace of build up. Shocker ending.

The verdict: A must watch for horror fans. Word on the entertainment news' that someone got the rights to make a Hollywood remake of this film. Do we really need another one? Just watch the original lah!